06/08/2026
Think Ojai, but in Australia.
Doonan: a rural community tucked into the rolling hills behind Australia’s Sunshine Coast. In the late 1800s, while Ventura County was evolving through agriculture, transportation, and oil, this part of Queensland was growing through timber, farming, and pioneering families looking to carve out a life on the land.
The arrival of the railway in 1891 in a rural coastal town in South East Queensland transformed the region from a timber frontier into a little community, attracting settlers, dairy farmers, and agricultural families. Including James and Jane Duke, who settled in the Edmundi area. Their family would go on to help shape the area, with William Hunt Duke and his wife, Edith, establishing “Eagle Farm” in Doonan in 1917, a dairy and banana farm located on what is now Duke Road.
Hidden among 1.42 acres of greenery, this beautiful Queenslander farmhouse is believed to have originally been a workers’ cottage connected to the Duke family’s farming operation.
Years of stories have filled the walls, and a century-old fig tree still stands on the property. Updated and modernized, the farmhouse is now looking for its next chapter.
And if I haven’t gotten you daydreaming enough about moving into this farmhouse, I’ll leave you with this: it’s just 15 minutes from the beaches of Noosa Heads—a place where I surfed wave after wave until my arms gave out in bathwater-warm water.
This historic Doonan farmhouse will be auctioned on Saturday, June 27, at 2:00 PM.
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